Using the exercise files

- [Instructor] For the most part, you don't really need any specific exercise files to go through this training course. There are several places in the course where we will need some files to work with, and it might be easier for you to just use some documents that you already have on your computer, but if you don't have any documents on your computer, and you just need something to work with as we go through this course, then I have included some exercise files that you can work with. For most courses, I assume that people already know how to download files from the web and put them in the right place, but since many people watching this course are learning Mac OS from the beginning, I want to walk you through the process of downloading the exercise files and putting them in the right folder.

As we do this, we're gonna get a preview of several skills that we'll see later in this course, but for now I just want to walk you through step by step. This is what it looks like when you're looking at one of our training courses online. This is not the Mac OS Sierra course page, it's some other course, but what I want to do is scroll through here just so you can see what it looks like. What you're looking for is a link like this that says Exercise Files. We can click on that, and then there will be a link like this to actually download the Exercise Files package. I'm gonna click on that, and if you're using Safari, then you should see this blue bar up near the top which shows you the status.

You can get an idea of how long it's gonna take to finish downloading this folder. Okay, now that's finished. I've successful downloaded that folder, but now I need to put them in the right place, so we've got them where we need them as we go through this course. So I want to minimize this window. I'll just hit this yellow button in the top-left corner. Then I want to open up Finder. I can find that here in the dock. I just click on this icon here, and it opens up a Finder window. This is what you can use to navigate through the files and folders on your computer. Now there are easier ways to do what I'm gonna show you, but I want to do this in a way that everybody can follow along with.

First, I'm gonna go up to these four buttons up near the top of the window. You can see I can click on these to change the view. I want to make sure I click on this third button so that I'm in the column view. Then I'm going to go to the sidebar on the left. You may have to scroll up or down, and find where it says Macintosh HD. I'm gonna click on that. Then I'm gonna click on where it says Users, then there should be a folder with your name on it, or an abbreviation of your name. Click on that, and then you should find a folder called Downloads. This is where the folder will go when you download it from our course page.

You can see I have two folders here. This is the folder that we just downloaded in that example. I don't really want to work with this. This is the actual folder that you will get when you download the Exercise Files for this course, so let's focus on this one. I'm gonna select that, I'm gonna go into Exercise Files, and then here are a bunch of folders with the Exercise Files we need for this course. Okay, I want to move this window over a little bit. I'm gonna go into the File menu up at the top, and I'm gonna hit New Finder Window. That gives me another window. I can put my mouse cursor up near the top of this window, click and hold, and drag to move this one over here.

In this window, I'm gonna go back to Macintosh HD. I'm gonna go to that same Users folder, then to the folder with my name on it. You may have to move this window a little bit so you can see everything. Then go to Documents. The Documents folder should be there on your computer by default. You may already see several other files or folders in the Documents folder, and that's fine, we're just gonna add to them. So, I'll click back on this other window. I'm going to click on the Documents folder. I'll see all the contents here.

I'll click on this first folder. I'm gonna hold the Shift key on my keyboard, click on the last folder, so now they're all selected. Now I can point at any of these folders, click and hold my mouse button, drag over, and I can either drop it on top of where it says Documents, or if Documents is selected, I can just drop it over on this other column, and now I have moved all of those folders into my Documents folder. So you can see what I'm doing here. I'm taking them from the Documents folder in the Exercise Files and putting them into my actual Documents folder.

Okay, so next I'm going to select the Movies folder here. Then in this other window in the Exercise Files I'll go to the Movies folder, select the first one, hold the Shift key, select the last one, then drag all of these over to the Movies folder here, and they've moved there. One last time with Pictures. I'll select Pictures here, select the first one, hold the Shift key, select the last one, go back over to this folder, and I'm gonna go to Pictures here. If you use the Photos application, you'll see your Photos library is here.

You may have other folders or files here, that's fine. I'm just gonna drag these folders over here. Now when you finish with this course, it's probably a good idea to come back here and delete all of these files and folders that we just put in here, because otherwise it will clutter your system. When you're done here, you can just close these folders, and you're all set. Now it's also worth noting as we go through this course, I will go into both iTunes and the Photos library in this course, and I do already have things in those libraries.

I have photos in my Photos library. I have music in my iTunes library. These things are not included in the Exercise Files, and you will not have the same content that I have in these libraries. But for those, you can either just follow along by watching the movies, or if you already have contents in your library, you can follow along with your own material. So that's all you need. If you don't have access to the Exercise Files, of course you can just follow along with your own files, so let's get started.